William Chafe is Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History, where his scholarship, as his website states, “reflects his long-term interest in issue of race and gender equality.” He specializes in U.S. history after World War II, with a particular focus on African-Americans, women, or radical whites.

Unlike many in the Group of 88, Chafe has published widely. And unlike most Group members, several of Chafe’s books have received widespread attention and praise. His website states that his most important book “helped to re-orient scholarship on civil rights toward social history and community studies”—but, unlike so much of the rhetoric that’s come from the Group, the statement isn’t a boast. Civilities and Civil Rights,a study of the Greensboro sit-ins, has been widely used in college courses for the past quarter-century.

Chafe penned a second prize-winning book in his biography of Allard Lowenstein, Never Stop Running. The book is clearly a sympathetic portrayal of Lowenstein—the longtime liberal activist best-known for his role in jumpstarting the dump-Johnson movement of 1968—but is also exhaustively researched, and framed Lowenstein as part of broader political and intellectual developments of the 1960s and 1970s. David Oshinsky termed the book “both a superb biography of Lowenstein and a gripping history of liberal protest and reform in an increasingly conservative age.”

It’s hard to believe that someone who authored two such high-quality books could have taken such a closed-minded approach to events in Durham over the past 17 months.

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But Chafe’s influence on Duke has extended beyond his scholarship or (occasional, for the past 15 years) teaching. From 1995 through 2004, Chafe served as dean of Arts and Sciences faculty, a position that, among other responsibilities, authorizes faculty searches for each department.

In a 2002 address, he explained his strategy to faculty personnel matters: “There has remained a tendency to think of Duke as a place of wealth, whiteness and privilege. We aim to change that.” The Chronicle added that “Chafe said faculty diversity is still lacking, and that the University must continue to seek new ways to attract women and minorities.”

It’s worth remembering that Chafe wasn’t exactly speaking of 1950s Ole Miss in these remarks. Events of the past 17 months provide scant evidence that the Duke faculty is filled with professors determined to do everything they can to prevent the employment of women or minorities at their institution.

Chafe’s policies drew strong praise from the expected quarters. His associate dean, future Group stalwart Karla Holloway, gushed later that Chafe “managed, urged and encouraged institutional change around the issues of diversity.” (The diversity of which Holloway spoke, of course, did not include intellectual or pedagogical diversity, in which neither she nor Chafe have shown any interest.) “He has understood—both politically and ethically—the complexity of this objective, and has worked consistently to make it a substantive fact of our lives at Duke, rather than simply an ‘issue.’” (This ethics-based endorsement came from a person who displayed her own ethics as she wrote about the lacrosse case “white innocence means black guilt,” or when she passed along, though a mass e-mail, fifth-hand scurrilous gossip about the lacrosse players.)

Elite schools normally have placed academic excellence, not “diversity,” as their primary goal in hiring, as Economics professor Roy Weintraub pointed out at the time. “Any college has a limited resource,” Weintraub explained, “of not only money but administrative energy. Duke’s Arts and Sciences has, with the president’s and Board of Trustees’ direction, chosen to spend its money and energy on increasing diversity. There is, of course, an alternative choice seen in the past to be appropriate for the unique institution that is a university and that is the development of an ever-more distinguished faculty . . . Duke makes choices at the margin in every resource allocation decision and every programmatic expenditure. Have we chosen to settle for using our resources to achieve a more diverse faculty instead of a more intellectually distinguished one? The record of the past decade seems to indicate that the answer is ‘yes.’”

Chafe dismissed the concern, glibly suggesting that “diversity enhances our quality rather than diminishes it.” But Chafe—like extreme “diversity” advocates more generally—eluded Weintraub’s point. John Staddon, James B. Duke Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, observed at the time that the “argument against selecting for diversity is an example of a more general principle: Even if ability is equally distributed, if you limit your search you will often fail to hire the best person available.”

Critics from outside the academy often suggest that “diversity” leads to the hiring and retention of under-qualified minority candidates. There are, of course, a few examples of the pattern among the Group of 88—take, for instance, Wahneema Lubiano (Ph.D. 1987, no scholarly monographs published) or Thavolia Glymph (Ph.D. 1994, no scholarly monographs published). Duke also has a highly unusual policy requiring the provost, “in the event the AP&T Committee’s recommendation is negative . . . to determine whether all factors relating to the merit and value of the candidate, including ethnic, racial, and gender diversity, have been fully and adequately considered.” [emphasis added]

That said, it’s illegal to openly restrict the applicant pool by advertising that no white males (or, in some cases, white females as well) need apply. And, in most cases, it’s also illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender and (usually) race in the hiring process itself.

Yet, as Staddon noted, another path exists for diversity zealots to achieve their goal: “redefine excellence. Some might argue that an excellent physicist is not just someone good at physics but someone whose other attributes—region, gender, race—satisfy some non-physics criterion. ‘Excellence,’ in this new definition, represents a balance between these two sets of criteria.”

“Diversity” also can be achieved by reconfiguring the likely pool of applicants. For instance, a “diversity” dean committed to bringing aboard a gay Chicano male professor understands that he is more likely to do so by approving a new position in gay Chicano literature than one in biochemistry—because the applicant pool for the former field will likely contain a disproportionate share of gay Chicano males, while the applicant pool for the latter field is likely to contain about the same percentage of gay Chicano males as exist in the population as a whole.

And if a “diversity” dean wants more African-American female professors, he more likely can achieve his goal through green-lighting new positions in African-American cultural studies than by granting the Economics Department a new line to hire a specialist in high finance—again because the applicant pool for the former slot will likely contain a disproportionate share of African-American females, while the applicant pool for the latter field is likely to contain about the same percentage of African-American females as exist in the population as a whole.

But, of course, Duke (like all universities) has limited resources. For every new position created to advance a “diversity” agenda—almost always a race/class/gender-oriented professorship in humanities or a few social sciences departments—another faculty position will not be funded, even those justified by the more traditional rationale of hiring for curricular need or to replace distinguished professors who have left or retired. The (perhaps unintended) result? Over time, faculty culture dramatically changes, and the University comes to house a disproportionate number of professors whose fields reflect a belief that the United States, and Western society as a whole, is deeply oppressive on grounds of race, class, and gender.

Or, in other words, just the kind of faculty members willing to set aside the academy’s traditional fidelity to due process (to say nothing of professors’ usual caring for the well-being of their own students) and see in the wild allegations of Crystal Mangum and Mike Nifong—claims that white, male, elite athletes had sexually and verbally victimized a poor, black, female mother—a validation of the beliefs upon which their intellectual careers had been built.

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This certainly is how Chafe initially viewed the lacrosse case. But his subsequent behavior “evolved” in such a way that he has never questioned his initial extreme remarks. His path:

1.) March 31, 2006: By this point, the only information known was presented by Mike Nifong and the Nifong-led DPD investigation. But despite the academy’s traditional fidelity to dispassionate evaluation of evidence, the former dean published an inflammatory op-ed in the Chronicle suggesting that the whites who kidnapped, beat, and murdered Emmett Till provided the appropriate historical context for interpreting the lacrosse players’ behavior. In an unintended commentary on the lax intellectual basis of his article, this historian of the civil rights movement misindentified the year of Till’s murder, one of the highest-profile events of the 1950s civil rights struggle. Chafe’s misuse of history in the op-ed certainly raises some questions about whether he has been so cavalier with sources in his scholarly work. While I’ve assigned both Civilities and Never Stop Running in past courses, I could never do so again seeing how Chafe evaluated evidence in the lacrosse case.

2.) May 3, 2006: By this point, the media had reported on both Reade Seligmann’s alibi (including the video of him somewhere else at the time of the “crime”) and Mike Nifong’s ordering the police to violate their own procedures to produce a players-only lineup. Chafe took to the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education not to apologize for his initial rush to judgment but to condemn those who elected to “hem and haw over the details of what did or did not happen.” Instead, he reasoned, people needed to focus on the party, whose effects he compared to Hurricane Katrina(!) and which proved that Duke needed a policy that “any student group, on or off the campus, that promotes or engages in racial stereotyping is subject to disciplinary action.” Ironically, his own essay violated his proposed policy: he asserted, without qualification, that “a student group at Duke—the lacrosse team . . . hurled racial epithets at black people.” In fact, one player, not the 47 members of “the lacrosse team,” hurled one epithet, in response to a racial taunt from Kim Roberts. Chafe was thus suggesting that Brad Ross (who wasn’t even in Durham the night of the party and about whose character no one, to my knowledge, has ever said anything publicly critical) should have been disciplined solely on the basis of personal behavior by another member of a 47-person student organization to which Ross belonged.

3.) January 17, 2007: Chafe joined 88 colleagues in signing the “clarifying” letter. The document stated, “There have been public calls to the authors to retract the ad or apologize for it . . . We reject all of these.” It also affirmed, “We appreciate the efforts of those who used the attention the incident generated to raise issues of discrimination and violence”—the precise stated aims of the protests organized by the potbangers who carried the “castrate” banner on March 26, 2006; and the “activists” who blanketed the campus with “wanted” posters on March 29, 2006.

4.) February 23, 2007: By this point, Nifong had dropped the rape charge and recused himself from the case after the Bar filed ethics charges. It was clear both that Mangum’s and Nifong’s stories were total fabrications. Chafe’s response, in an op-ed co-signed by five others? It was time to “move forward,” stop talking about the lacrosse case’s lessons, and enact the CCI’s Group of 88 Enrollment Initiative. Michael Gustafson delivered a devastating critique: “I have no choice but to believe that moving forward, to these six faculty members, means take the story DA Nifong chose to tell and then fast-forward to now as if nothing else had happened. I have no choice but to believe that these faculty members, in seeing that the reality of the situation in no way plays into the assumptions of white, male, athlete privilege that our (blessedly former) colleague Houston Baker championed want us to base our thoughts and actions on the narrative created in the first two weeks rather than the realities discovered over the past eleven months.”

5.) April 30, 2007: By this point, all charges had been dismissed and AG Cooper had proclaimed the players innocent victims of a rogue prosecutor. Chafe’s response? To lash out at critics of the Group. “Bloggers who have targeted the ‘Group of 88’,” he informed the Chronicle, were guilty of “sending us e-mails and making phone calls wishing our deaths and calling us ‘Jew b-’ and ‘n-b-’.” When I subsequently asked him to produce evidence that any of the dozen or so “bloggers who have targeted the ‘Group of 88’” had done any such thing, he admitted that he couldn’t substantiate his accusation (which was, it’s worth reiterating, an allegation that an identifiable group of people—“bloggers who have targeted the ‘Group of 88’”—had engaged in criminal activity.) His new rationalization? “There were repeated phone calls and e-mail messages. I never claimed they were from you, but they were concerted.” Alas, his insinuation that the Chronicle misquoted him came up short—since the Chronicle article quoted a Chafe e-mail.

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“Sex and Race.” It was the title of Chafe’s March 31, 2006 lacrosse-players-as-lynchers op-ed. It also could describe the intellectual approaches of the overwhelming majority of Group of 88 members, whose scholarship Dean Chafe so zealously championed.

To return to Chafe’s 2002 address, and his assertion, “There has remained a tendency to think of Duke as a place of wealth, whiteness and privilege. We aim to change that.”

Chafe and his colleagues in the Group of 88 certainly managed to fulfill that goal. Duke is now thought of an institution where dozens of “diversity”-obsessed professors rushed to judgment to advance their personal, pedagogical, and ideological agendas, at the expense of their own students’ well-being, and subsequently refused to apologize for—or even acknowledge—their dubious conduct.

I will delay my comments on Professor Chafe, ... for my visceral response -- at the first reading of this post -- is that Chafe deserves to have his scholarly laurels and amulets stripped from his academic uniform. I am angry that someone with his position and power could adopt such a singularly inappropriate position. Who does he think he is?

I do not want to be unfair. But my first impression is that Chafe has exceeded --even violated -- his understanding of and responsibility to ethics and his moral authority.

So I will revisit this post tomorrow and I will study the evidence.

I frankly hope that study will reveal that Chafe is worthy of a more favorable review. But, my sense is --- that is not the case.

Parents need to think twice about sending their children to a wretched place like this. These views are not taken seriously outside the academic cloister -- why are parents spending all that tuition money to support trash like THIS person?

As usual, Prof. Johnson presented a thorough and succinct review of Prof. Chafe's work, his contributions to the academy and to the intellectual world as a whole. Had I only had the knowledge of Prof. Chafe's academic career from the first part of Prof. Johnson's post, I would have thought very highly of him as an academic and would have questioned, but likely given a pass, to his time as Dean and his emphasis on a diversity agenda (I know I'll be criticized for that one).

As I have posted about previously, I'm not sure how to evaluate his academic career in light of his egregious actions. How large of a shadow do the following actions cast on such a man: (i) signing the listening statement; (ii) signing the clarifying statement; (iii) his 3/06 op/ed that the Emmett Till case provided the appropriate historical context for the LAX case; the 2/23/07 article, the 4/30/07 "I'm the victim" statement and (iv) failing to apologize for it all.

Evaluating each transgression:

(i) signing the listening statement could be forgiven as an honest mistake. In the early days of the case, it could be reasonable for a professor to be easily swayed by his professional colleagues to "do" something in response to the horrible allegations. While he should have stated in response to his colleagues' request that he will presume innocence and emphasize the need for due process, it is not difficult to see how a professor, even of his stature, could have been swayed to sign such a statement by his peers.

(ii) signing the clarifying statement is less forgivable. Once it was clear that the original statement was appropriately interpreted as presuming guilt, rather than signing the incomprehensible clarifying statement, he clearly should have, as a more senior member of the faculty, assumed a leadership position and encouraged his colleagues to admit their error in judgment and publicly apologize; but he didn't. At this stage of the case, it is less reasonable to believe that Prof. Chafe would have kowtowed to his peers.

(iii) Emmett Till; the 2/23/07 article and the "threats" from bloggers. What? By now, he needs to just stop embarrassing himself. It is not an exaggeration to state that he helped write our American history of the 20th century as acknowledged by Prof. Johnson; yet he seems to forget its lessons in one statement (Emmett Till? really?). I suspect that if he did not "teach" at Duke and one his students made a similar analogy, he would have correctly marked any such paper with a bold "F".

(iv) Prof. Chafe's failure to apologize for it all is the most heartbreaking. As I've written, it is sometimes difficult for me to determine what weight to give the G88's actions in the LAX case in comparison to their other works. Also, notwithstanding their bravado, as other posters have noted, it is reasonable to conclude that some of them do regret their actions and are remorseful. Perhaps group pressure keeps them all - especially the low level members - from apologizing, but the same excuse can not exist for Prof. Chafe. It is inconceivable that a man of his intellect can stand by the listening statement, the clarifying statement and his own statements in light of all that has transpired. It is further inconceivable that an academic of his stature could be influenced by others to remain silent. That he has not apologized can only be evidence that he has concluded that he has committed no transgression for which he should have remorse.

I don't personally know a single Duke student, but I don't think it is bold to assume that those harmed by the G88 would be willing to forgive them all if forgiveness were requested. That none of the G88 members sought forgiveness from those they have harmed by way of an apology (excepting the two private apologies and the one prof. missing from the clarifying statement) is a more outrageous transgression than any other. None of them can be forgiven until they atone and since none appear willing to do so, the specter of their outrageous actions against Reade, Collin, Dave, the remaining team members and the entire Duke family will forever shadow their academic careers.

When heroes fall . . .

*************************Prof. Johnson, as an academic, has set forth a reasonable criticism of hiring based on a diversity agenda. He has further implied that Prof. Chafe's time as the Deans of Arts of Sciences followed such an agenda which, I believe, the Prof. concludes leads to a lack of intellectual diversity which can only lead to a less well rounded education. As I contribute each month to my young daughter's college fund, I can only hope that she follows a path in higher education toward the hard sciences, i.e., math and science.

Prof. Johnson your post caused a light to come on for me on this. Chafe and the other signees are upset because they have had a goal to create little leftists with their propoganda. The party was a slap to THEIR face as:

1. it involved stripping which is an afront to their views on gender.

2. it involved racial name calling from the direction of whites to blacks [the reverse does not count] which is an afront to their views on race.

3. it did not involve drugs that we know of and thus is likely an afront to their views on drugs.

All kidding aside about number 3, they take the party as a personal insult to them and a sign that they are failing to make their students believe what they want them to believe. That is why they focus on the party and not the criminal justice issues.

BTW, I too have found as some economists have undermined their nonpartisanship, their books have to be eliminated consideration for adoption for classes. It is certainly anyone's right to take on baggage that might hurt their textbook adoptions. One can not be expected to ignor when someone undermines their credibility and still adopt their textbook.

I posted as anon at 12:38 at too great a length, but I do have another comment:

Prof. Johnson writes that "Chafe took to the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education not to apologize for his initial rush to judgment but to condemn those who elected to 'hem and haw over the details of what did or did not happen.'" Prof. Johnson further writes that Prof. Chafe's scholarship is focused on the 'issue of race and gender equality.” He specializes in U.S. history after World War II, with a particular focus on African-Americans, women, or radical whites".

Such a focus should include a study of individual human rights including Constitutional protections of due process, right to counsel, presumption of innocence etc. Yet Prof. Chafe seemed willing to immediately forgo the individual human rights of three of his students for a form of "group think". I would conclude from Prof. Johnson's description of his work that Prof. Chafe has written about the negative impact of "group think" in terms of race, gender and class, but based on race, gender and class, he immediately sacrificed three individuals to a group, or, rather the mob. The facts that some elected to "hem and haw" about mattered to those individuals; they mattered a lot. But because Prof. Chafe was willing to ignore their individuality as humans, he could forget the facts and concentrate only on - I can't believe I've going to write it - wait for it . . . the metanarrative.

You make a mistake, you admit it. You hurt someone you apologize. We all learned these things in kindergarten. That 88 Duke Professors have failed to abide by these lessons is incredibly sad and very puzzling.

Congratulations on sticking to your principles Professors. It has only cost your reputations.

Just back from dropping my kid off for another year at Duke. At least he has a published list of Profs. to avoid -- because they are so intolerant and closed-minded that taking them risks grade retaliation for anyone who is an independent thinker and seeks to understand multiple perspectives. Also, why study under a monumental hypocrite or a fraud?

I think the reason there is no admission of any mistake is that the mistakes made in the context of the LAX affair highlight that the core of the system of beliefs and the foundation of the scholarship of many of the Gang of 88 is only a glorified mistake.

A great job. Only one tiny quibble (and I'm well aware that you elect, whenever possible, to understate) but they " subsequently refused to apologize for - or even acknowledge - their dubious conduct"?

Dubious? Hiring the strippers was, one supposes, somewhat dubious conduct. The diversity-obsessed profs' conduct ever since has been foul.

OK. I am an MD who teaches medical students and residents. If you do that job right, you are helping to create the competition to your own generation. But dammit, that is the job you chose so get over it. And keep in mind that adults should help the kids to get along in life; only a twisted malcontent would regard the younger generation as an enemy or a threat. On the other hand, If someone does not get this, I do not know to get this across to someone who does not understand this intuitively.. I guess I am trying to say that the role of a teacher is a critically important one - in the scheme of things - but it cannot be seperated from the matter of wanting to help the kids. Because that is fundamentally Right. Chafe seems confused on this point. And I really do not know what to say to him.

Chafe took to the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education not to apologize for his initial rush to judgment but to condemn those who elected to “hem and haw over the details of what did or did not happen.” Instead, he reasoned, people needed to focus on the party, whose effects he compared to Hurricane Katrina(!) and which proved that Duke needed a policy that “any faculty group, on or off the campus, that promotes or engages in racial stereotyping is subject to disciplinary action.”

Smart and accomplished people may sometimes act as True Believers or be unfair. Has diversity become a one-way street? Maybe the special interest groups, such as African-American Studies, should abandon their stance of de facto segregation and embrace faculty with a more balanced perspective on people, issues, events, and academic accomplishment.

In regards to bloggers, when one has been an established pontiff for years, it becomes difficult to deal with heresy when it arises.

Today's lesson by Professor Johnson is extraordinarily well-done, and may be the best of his series.

In May 2007, Professor Chafe exchanged emails with John in Carolina. For those who did not have the chance to read this blog, I recommend that you go back and take a look. It's quite revealing.

Here is Professor Chafe in his own words:

"I regret, and so do many others, that the advertisement, as interpreted by some, has led to division, recrimination, and hostility. Many ask that I/we apologize for the statement. But to apologize for something that others interpret differently than yourself is not an act of principle, but rather one of expediency and hypocrisy."

anonymous @12:38 AM said...It is inconceivable that a man of his intellect can stand by the listening statement, the clarifying statement and his own statements in light of all that has transpired. It is further inconceivable that an academic of his stature could be influenced by others to remain silent. That he has not apologized can only be evidence that he has concluded that he has committed no transgression for which he should have remorse.

Two words...Lawrence. Summers.

anonymous @1:00 AM said...Such a focus should include a study of individual human rights including Constitutional protections of due process, right to counsel, presumption of innocence etc. Yet Prof. Chafe seemed willing to immediately forgo the individual human rights of three of his students for a form of "group think".

True for virtually all the G88.

This is why their behaviour needs to be seen as the height of hypocrisy.

Yes there is racism and sexism within the halls of Duke. But we must look to the faculty as the source rather than the students.

Above all, however, it is the unrepentant hypocrisy of these folk which boils my gizzard.

"Think of Duke as a place of wealth..." Bet THAT one got stuck in someone's craw, when it came time to settle-up and sign checks. In any case, Duke is less wealthy now, after the settlement that the 88 helped make possible, so Chafe got one of his wishes.

Students are consumers like anyone else; if someone holds up a sign that says: "privileged rich people go away," what does anyone think will happen? Not only will "privileged" students look elsewhere, "privileged" donors will likewise go away. The wish for # 2 could be coming true!

Randolph Macon College hoped to attract women, too, but the emphasis on victimhood brought in...more victims, women with "broken wings" (that's a quote from several former RMWC employees/instructors or students.) "Take-back-the-night" kinda gals, the kind who sometimes make themeselves into victims in the absence of bona fides. The school basically had to pay wealthy girls (privileged, too) from Muslim countries to attend, and gave insupportable discounts to nearly everyone else. Now it's called Randolph College, admits males, and the students apparently don't hide in their dorms as has been the case in the last 10-15 years or so. And BTW: the school's cherished - and valuable - art collection is potentially on the auction block.

Do Duke Alums want to see their alma mater go in the same direction, to the edge of bankruptcy? Diversity has a price, when those people pursuing it don't know what a budget is for, and don't have to write the checks.

Chafe is getting his wishes.Duke BOT is getting some rest while Chafe is getting his wishes.

These people, pople like Chafe, have come to see white males in a way that defines their own racial beliefs . . . they are racist themselves. The very fact that they think that they cannot be defined as racist is part of their ideology. They are, as some Jewish scholars might attest, self-hating whites. They put forward a sef-serving race/gender/class metanarrative without regard to anything that might interfere with their agendas even so neither the white or black experience has been so monolithic as these people would have us believe . . . as Chafe's/their concept of diversity is defined very narrowly in this way. In reality, their concept of diversity is one of outing and not at all inclusionary into benefits of higher education such as are practiced at Duke University. These people are careful in their criticisms. They know to be critical only of anyone outside of their definition of diversity. They are self-serving cowards.

It's interesting that sexual violence against three young men is considered ok in the mind of the Chafes and the Lubianos and the Bakers. Why else would they congratulate sign-holders who advocate castration? Could the 88 not at least have distanced themselved from the efforts of at least two of the protesters, the ones holding the sign?

One wonders if these same proponents of male emasculation/castration would support a Muslim family's right to genitally mutilate their unwilling daughter? Perhaps Duke should begin sending out Duke Edu applications to places where that's popular, in order to increase Duke's "diversity" to include cultures who practice those procedures?

"Wanted: students whose families practice(d) genital mutilation."

Where diversity is championed above human rights, another human construct is built: it's called a "zoo."

*(for the slower of the 88: "if you want to build a better zoo, better to begin with diversity.")

You would do academia and the greater public alike a great service if you'd go through a list of top 20 elite university faculty over the past, say, 20 years, and tell everyone how many faculty (white, male; the upholders of elite status!) retired with, say, only one monograph under their belts...

That's a lot of work. Why don't you try it in only one book-producing area, ie, history or literature rather than sociology or psychology. I wonder if you wouldn't find a lot of old, white, male deadwood...I suspect that low-level academic production/lower standards didn't start with the hiring of non-white males. Just a thought.

This is it? This is the great expose that we waited so breathlessly for? This is the routing of the PC forces? Where are the hot-and-heavy quotations from the scholarship on race/gender in modern society that prove that this sort of work leads to Stalin-like oppression and Soviet-like ideological dogma? Where are the careful tools of the historian, where you show that the cultural, social, and political conditions of the writing of Chafe's books lead to Nifong?

And the punchline to the *whole thing* is that you're not going to assign his *books* any longer for your courses?! LOLOLOL

OMG, it's too rich. Thanks for all the laughs, KC. I thought this was gonna be the piece de resistance, but it turned out to be a piece of something else entirely. LOL

Duke, thanks to Chafe in his position, will become a private version of a community college. It will lose it's elite status (if it already hasn't) and will become a community college like institution whose specialty is diversity culture.

I have been reading the fascinating new book by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor on the Duke Lacrosse fiasco entitled, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. The book brings to light the factors that led to three innocent men being railroaded by the criminal justice system and by a society that presumes white men are guilty by virtue of their sex and race. The opening chapters describe the milieu at Duke, including the hardcore partying that was going on by both the men and women on campus. There is mention that the Duke women were as horny as the guys there with more than one sorority on campus hiring male strippers (page 2) but this was never picked up in the media (of course not, male strippers for women are considered empowerment, while for men they're sexist).

[snip]

She's the wife of Glen Reynolds, a law prof at UT Knoxville, aka Instapundit, one of the most widely-read bloggers going.

Unfortunately, people like Chafe do not simply destroy faculties like that at Duke. They also slowly help to destroy civilized life itself.

Chafe openly and happily endorsed the actions of thuggish police officers, a lying prosecutor, and the telling of lies in general. They he says that to disagree with him is to racist. He is delusional, but like Crystal, his delusions cause huge amounts of damage.

Don't think that the damage that Chafe has done can be contained to a few departments. The idea that there can be "Gay, Chicano Physics" as opposed to "White, Straight, Eurocentric Physics" is so laughable as to be absurd, yet that is what people like Chafe want us to think.

Devastating. KC just gutted a prominent Dean at Dook right before the world's eyes. That ought to be the nail in Brodhead's coffin.

This profile is an accurate but sad portrayal of what Dook (and other once-elite campuses) has (have) become. The saddest of all ironies in this affair is that this rush to judgment came from a guy who made his reputation on defending the civil rights of others. How can anyone take him seriously after this?

K.C.'s point about earmarking hiring slots towards hate studies to attract more people who "look different but think exactly the same" as self-hating white liberals is dead on. It set off an unmistakably clear chain reaction:

1) emphasis on diversity-at-all costs led to a faculty unduly weighted in a hate-studies agenda instead of one screened with the more traditional criteria of scholarship, instruction and distinction (all things you would have to possess if you were hired based on a career of achievement, rather than some quota/entitlement based on your skin tone);

2) the powder keg was loaded and primed in the event of a "race case" and upon ignition last March, the slanted faculty quickly dispensed with traditional academic notions of civil liberties, restraint and deliberation in favor of knee-jerk liberal race baiting, with the facts being damned,

3) as would be expected, recklessness has its consequences, and when the facts catch up to the story, the University, its President, its Administration and some of its Faculty look absolutely ridiculous and are now trying to settle with everyone they can get a check handed to (naturally, those checks are funded by insurance policies paid by the tuition of the very students they lynched and alumni contributions from graduates who have distinguished themselves in the free market after having been instructed by faculty hired in a competence-first era at Dook).

One wonders whether Dook would find itself in this mess if it had left achievement and distinction in their rightful places (above diversity) when they made hiring decisions. That question answers itself.

Anon 6:13am challenged KC Johnson to go through a list of top 20 elite university faculty over the past 20 years and tell everyone how many white male faculty retired with only one monograph under their belt. S/he supposed that Johnson would find a lot of old, white, male deadwood, since lower standards didn't start with the hiring of non-white males.

I'll urge KC Johnson not to waste his considerable talents on such a fool's errand.

To fact-check this opinion, I picked a top-20 institution at random (U. of Chicago), and visited the website of the History Dept. (Prof. Johnson's home field). Here are the crude publication counts for the male (white, Hispanic, and Asian, for the race-conscious Anon) faculty:

Actually, Chafe seems to me to be one of those nice guys we all have in our extended families who took on the task of organizing a large family reunion only to find out that he has invited a group to join him at Duke who have turned out to be a mutant strain of academic hacks.

Now, as Nixon said, the toothpaste is out of the tube.

The extended family unit needs to admit that mistakes were made when the problems were not anticipated in the first place.

Gushing Karla Holloway should be empowered by the extended family to take on the job now of managing, urging and encouraging institutional change around the issue of scholarship...with outcomes firmly established.

Chafe will never fully understand the consequences of his own actions until he retires and looks back at the litter he brought to the halls of the academy.

I think Karla Holloway will make a find Spear Catcher for the Duke family.::GP

I spoke too soon, upon refreshing, I see 6:29's worthless contribution. Don't be so hard on 6:13, s/he might be salvageable after seeing the results of the search he asked K.C. to do. I had no doubt that someone here would do it for him. I challenge him to a similar study of the academic publication output of "angry studies" professors at elite institutions.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is expected to announce his resignation today, the White House said. The former rising star in the Bush administration came under fire from congressional Democrats over his handling of the ouster of eight U.S. attorneys. In the past, Mr. Gonzales had admitted mistakes were made in providing "incomplete" and misleading answers about the firings of the U.S. attorneys.

For more information, see: http://wsj.com/article/0,,SB117408132373139865,00.html?mod=djemalert

This morning, at least two commenters have used the phrase "self-hating whites". I would like to point out that Chafe and his ilk are not self-hating whites. Actually they adore "the right sort of whites", like themselves. Yes, they do hate some whites, but mostly those are the whites who grew up eating fried food.

Freshman Senator James Webb (D.-Vir.) actually wrote an article about this phenomenom for The Wall Street Journal a few years ago. The elite whites don't see blacks as competitors, but as tools to beat down the poorer whites -- who they do see as competitors.

Just to take one example, racialized college admissions: Racialized admissions elevate race over traditional scholastic measuring tools such as standardized tests. Who does this hurt?

It is well-known that there is a "wealth-component" to performance on standardized tests -- that the wealthier the family of the test-taker, the more likely the test-taker will achieve a superior score. This "wealth component" is true among all races. However, even the poorest whites tend, on average, to score higher than even the richest blacks. Obviously, then, when racialized admissions shuts out lower-scoring whites for higher-scoring blacks -- even where the whites' scores are higher than the blacks' -- the effect is to replace poor whites with rich blacks. Out are the children of white plumbers, carpenters, and electricians; in are the children of black lawyers, doctors, and professors. Thus, the "wrong sort of whites" are replaced with the "right sort of blacks" -- rich blacks who think just like the rich whites.

Racialized admissions never cost a rich white kid his chance at a college education, and racialized hiring never cost a rich white youngster his chance to make a good living. At the end of all "affirmative action policies", there should be a disclaimer similar to the ones that follow movies: "No rich whites were harmed by the implementation of this policy (and no poor blacks helped)".

I could go on at length, with other examples, but I don't want KC's opponents to be able to again seek to divert attention from the central issue of today's posting.

["I regret, and so do many others, that the advertisement, as interpreted by some, has led to division, recrimination, and hostility. Many ask that I/we apologize for the statement. But to apologize for something that others interpret differently than yourself is not an act of principle, but rather one of expediency and hypocrisy."]

Thanks for the quote. I don't recall this particular quote but I may have missed updates here and there.

[Chafe cannot acknowledge the simple fact that he was wrong.]

That what it seems like.

As far as what Chafe wrote, I think that an apology is a simple act of human decency.

Just a few days ago, KC went out of his way to critise Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney General. Some here complained that Gonzales was deserving of better treatment; that he was innocent in a way that the Duke case malefactors were not. Today Gonzales resigned. Considering that he and Bush are long-times buddies from Texas, one can assume he did not leave for the sake of trivial issues. KC is right handed. KC is left handed.

Actually, Chafe seems to me to be one of those nice guys we all have in our extended families who took on the task of organizing a large family reunion only to find out that he has invited a group to join him at Duke who have turned out to be a mutant strain of academic hacks.

Although I wouldn't have put it quite so strongly, I do think there's some truth here given the scholarly records of several members of the G88. Chafe's intentions as dean may well have been good, and I do think it's possible to expand search pools and make creative job offers ways that increase minority hiring in academia without doing it only in the humanities and without sacrificing anything in terms of quality. However, it's very easy for those good intentions to end up somewhere different. It is a question worth asking whether Chafe got more (or, really, less) than he bargained for.

One other point: the idea that the desire to diversify the faculty *necessarily* leads to positions being reallocated to the humanities and the social sciences doesn't necessarily hold. It depends on how the institution does business.

At my place, admittedly much smaller and less elite than Duke, we have been attempting (with some success) to diversify our faculty for a number of years. However, the allocation of faculty lines is decided upon by a committee made up of faculty from across campus and the VPAA rather than the VPAA by him/herself. I've been on that committee for many years and our debates over how to allocate tenure-track lines mostly boil down to the quality of the case a department can make with respect to curricular needs and student demand/enrollment pressures, with some additional attention paid to those proposed positions that might be more attractive to diverse job candidates (e.g., something like a position dedicated to studying Islam).

In the last few years, we've added new positions in Biology, Math, and Economics among others and replaced tenure-track positions in other sciences and said "no" to many proposals for new positions in the humanities. We've approved some there as well of course. My point is simply that seeing the drive to diversity as *necessarily* being a redistribution to the humanities is not always true. One of our humanities departments has lost two net positions in the last few years.

For us, the strategies for diversifying really kick in AFTER positions are allocated as we work with departments to identify broader pools of candidates and work to find ways to bring traditionally underrepresented folks with solid qualifications to campus for interviews.

"Sexual stereotyping" at the LAX party? I've always found it very ironic that it was undoubtedly an excess of PC thinking that landed the LAXers in the mess they found themselves in that night. They called a sex-oriented business and requested two white strippers (probably thinking they'd get a couple of beautiful, nubile, young dancers). The sex business worker told them she could send out a white and a hispanic dancer. The LAXers said fine -- then opened the door to a couple of black women pushing 30, both of whom had given birth to children, and one of whom appeared to be both drunk and beat up. It is highly doubtful that any of the young men at the LAX party really wanted to see either Kim Roberts or Crystal Mangum "dance" -- but they paid them $800 anyway. Why? Probably because they were afraid it would be politically incorrect to reject two less-than-attractive black women on that basis. (Interestingly, an early article on the case reported that Devon Sherwood, the only black LAXer, left the party right after the two women arrived. He was quoted in the article as saying that Crystal Mangum looked "pitiful." Sherwood apparently wasn't interested in wasting his time watching two unattractive black matrons "dancing" -- and unlike his white teammates, Sherwood had no need to demonstrate his PC bonafides by pretending to find the women attractive or alluring).

KC, since Chafe criticized whiteness, do you think he meant that Duke should hire more Indian engineers, Chinese mathematicians, and Japanese computer scientists? Just kidding...

I loved his line that, “There has remained a tendency to think of Duke as a place of wealth, whiteness and privilege. We aim to change that.” Funny, I don't think the Development Office has included that quote in their fund raising campaigns.

Chafe has succeeded in dumbing down, not only the academy, but the language.

Many on this site have commented about how words such as racist, bigot, etc. have lost meaning as they are tossed around in unfounded ways. We understand that this dumbing-down of language has been happening long before the Duke hoax.

I'd submit that Chafe, as a professor and civil rights historian has exceeded them all. How?

In using the Till case. Comparing a horrific case to the Duke hoax, diminshes what happened historically. Students will discount the meaning anytime the Till case is now introduced into conversation. Chafe has succeeded in dumbing down in ways that cannot not immediately be measured. He has reverse-engineered the meta-narrative.

His work is now no more than someone spreading bad bullshit at a cocktail party. The circle of listeners will politely excuse themselves and go to the bar instead of enduring the nonsense.

Paradise lost...no more like credibility lost.

Quite a legacy professor...congratulations and thank you.

By the way, for the parent who dropped of the student...you make a major false assumption that just because your son/daughter now know who signed the Listening/Clarifying Statement that you don't continue to have major problems. You need to dig deeper as many may not have been in a position to expose themselve in due to time constraints.

Not knowing what you don't know can hurt you, while knowing what you don't know enables you to mitigate the risks. Good luck.

KC's post on Chafe is very important. Many on this site, in the media, and in Duke's "whitewash" PR machine have attempted to paint the 88 a radical, "fringe" element of the broader faculty. Not so! Chafe's views are considered "mainstream" at Duke. IMHO, faculty who have remained silent on the hoax agree with Chafe, but just don't want to state so publicly after the tide turned in the case. Chafe is a hero on campus, and will be vigorously defended (perhaps behind closed doors) as a champion of the cause. Duke alums who want to write this disgusting episode off as a minority view rant by studies department radicals are kidding themselves.

-- A diverse assemblage of thoughtful and often link-rich mini-essays from various opponents of the Hard Left faculty's actions;

-- Some this'n'that contributions from "the rest of us";

-- Drive-by snark in various flavors from Group of 88 allies and enablers.

To the latter commenters: Many of DiW's readers are hungry for thoughtful defenses of and explanations for the actions of Duke's railroading faculty. This means essays that are framed with logical, thought-through arguments, and present supporting evidence and hyperlinks that substantiate the claims being made.

The sorts of essays that (many of) you would like to receive from your students.

However, if "you can't argue the facts and you can't argue the law": perhaps the ire so readily directed at KC Johnson should find a worthier target?

One follow-up point I should make on the assigning of lines issue--here's the Chronicle editorial on Chafe's departure:

"Regrettably, Chafe's major legacy will be the Arts and Science budget deficit, which threatens to subsume the school and has necessitated a hiring freeze and led to occasional talks of cutting back the number of faculty positions. This problem is something Chafe's successor will have to wrestle with for years to come."

The deficit led to a reduction in new lines--creating, in effect, a diversity "zero-sum" game.

I'm not sure of the magnitude of the budget deficit that he left behind but that the school had this problem is interesting itself.

The subprime lending problems spreading to Alt-A and perhaps to prime has led to financial difficulties for many people and I'd guess that the Northeast parents of students attending Duke have been affected to some degree.

Duke's ability to jam up their diversity numbers could run into problems in a general economic slowdown with schools offering lower prices, more aid picking up more students.

KC quoted Duke Economics professor Roy Weintraub as saying:"Duke’s Arts and Sciences has, with the president’s and Board of Trustees’ direction, chosen to spend its money and energy on increasing diversity."

I can see what's in it for Chafe, Holloway, etc. (ideological gratification, underlings who will support them.) I can see what's in it for President Brodhead (ideological gratification, and unlike Larry Summers he gets to keep his job). I can see why a board of trustees would want to keep their women & minority numbers at least in the median for elite universities, to avoid official or unofficial preprisals from various entrentched Federal bureaucracies and the extortionate "civil rights" establishment.)

What still puzzles me is why Duke BOT members chose to pursue "diversity" more vigorously than other universities. What did they think was in it for Duke? What was in it for them? What distinguishes them from the trustees of other almost-top-tier universities?

I know KC doesn't have the time for it, and neither do I, so it's only an idle daydream ... but I would so love to see a series of profiles of the BOT.

OT on this thread, but I just read the Readers' Digest version of KC's book. I read that Dave Evans was a "former intern for Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)." All the more despicable that Liddy refused to make a statement in support of the three falsely accused young men even after they had been declared innocent. She's a piece of work, isn't she??

Well Done, KC. Anyone with an IQ higher than plant life should be able to see that the Gang of 88 and their fellows elsewhere throughout higher education have inflicted substantial damage to the academy. They are like termites, munching the joists supporting the building. It is time to fumigate the halls of higher learning.

Seriously, Chafe is like many academics who have done much solid scholarly work, but who get carried away with becoming part of the story, instead of simply trying to understand it. After writing some solid books, Chafe decided to try to make history rather than write it - and he lost is analytical judgment and decency. Any decent person would apologize for harming someone the way the athletes were harmed. Any reputable scholar should correct errors when his colleagues pointed them out. Mr. Chafe seems to feel this is beneath him. It is time for him to resign and clean out his office. He is no longer giving students value for their parents hard earned tuition dollars.

Keep up the good work. Sunshine is a wonderful disinfectant. This is why so many third rate academics resist having the public see their work. Because, like many of the G-88,Ward Churchill, etc, there is no 'there' there. If the historical profession wants to render itself irrelevant, they can keep following Chafe, Bellesiles and his defenders, and keep promoting a political agenda instead of scholarship. I repeat, I think a community college certificate in auto mechanics or a journeyman status as an electrician or plumber is a far better investment of time and money than anything offered by Chafe and his 88 fellow travelers,or any of the angry studies degrees.

Although your post is off topic I feel I must respond. You are incorrect to claim that although the one black team member left, the white members of the team stayed to watch the strippers, pretending to find them attractive.

Go back and read about what actually happened at the party. Many of the white boys left the house completely, some went into the other room to watch television, and some of them tried to convince Crystal and Kim to leave.

Your imagined scenario is based on your own metanarrative rather than on fact. Too many fill-in-the-blank metanarratives around.

KC Johnon's post today isn't particularly careful scholarship. He doesn't remind the casual reader that Chafe, unlike many of the G88, is very senior & has had the time & position to do research, ergo, the eight books. Note: Eight books is a lot, even for an American historian, ie, one who needn't work in multiple languages and/or foreign archives.

The use of verbs like "gush" and adverbs like "glib," do nothing for the argument. Indeed, they reflect Professor Johnson's agenda. Perhaps, Professor Holloway was not "gushing," but asserting. Perhaps, Professor Chafe, was "plausibly" rather than "glibly" explaining.

Much of the impression a reader takes from an article depends on which facts the author chooses to use and how s/he arranges them.

Your fans are always demanding that "trolls" provide evidence. So, Professor Johnson, who are these "Critics from outside the academy" who often suggest that "diversity" leads to the hiring and retention of under-qualified candidates. Please provide the cites for who made the comments and what their evidence is. I'd like to check their studies myself. IMHO, worst case, these "under-qualified minority candidates" just replace the under-qualified white guys. Or were there no under-qualified white guys in the halcyon days when white men ruled the academy?

It's "game." It comes from game theory and refers to games where one player's loss is another player's gain. For example, five friends playing poker is a zero-sum game. The gains of the winners come at the expense of the losses of the losers. Add up all the gains and losses and it "sums" to zero.

The best example of a positive-sum "game" is economic exchange. Both parties are made better off (at least ex ante) by their trade. And over time, economic exchange increases the total amount of wealth in the society.

Negative-sum games abound. K-street in DC is the best example. :) Lobbyist spend billions so that only one of their clients can get some favored legislation passed. The result is resources diverted to wasted activities that could have produced wealth but instead are net losses.

Perhaps you misunderstood one aspect of my post. I was not suggesting that the issue with Chafe's diversity agenda was that it led to the hiring of under-qualified minority candidates. I was saying that the agenda had skewed the faculty on pedagogical and ideological matters.

As to unqualified white males hired in the past: I have personal experience with at least two such hires. The existence of unqualified past hires, however, does not seem to me a compelling rationalization to hire unqualified candidates (of any race, gender, or ethnicity) today.

10:37 & all the rest of you who insist on using metanarrative all the time--especially in the negative. Did you learn this word in AP English or what? Try using something somewhat more explicit. Please!!!

Steve Horowitz said:"One other point: the idea that the desire to diversify the faculty *necessarily* leads to positions being reallocated to the humanities and the social sciences doesn't necessarily hold."

No, but it's be far the easiest way, and it is therefore pretty common.

What you describe your school as doing is what "affirmative action" was originally supposed to mean, but as you yourself observe doing it right isn't easy.

Ok, so where's your evidence for that? Please provide the data/name of the study. How do you know "the agenda had skewed the faculty on pedagogical and ideological matters"? Or is this your personal opinion?

Unqualified white males are not a compelling rationalization for anything. I didn't claim they were, now did I? I simply noted --shock! awe! suprise!--that the presence of unqualified people in any profession didn't start recently. Many of your posters--who go on and on about "lowering" standards--appear to think that is the case. Stimmt?

I'd like to comment about the value of increased "diversity," from the perspective of a small/medium sized city as it relates to the medical professions and specialties.

Hypothesis:Sometimes the pursuit of diversity is a method of defeating competition and keeping potential competitors away.

Fact: small cities sometimes keep medical specialists out by utilizing something called a "certificate of need." While this is not essentially a bad thing, if a specialty is over-represented, it is sometimes used by local interests in order to keep competitors away.

That means that specialties that aren't needed - (but aren't represented) - can slip in, since they don't affect the powers-that-be. They may not make it, but few really care: they'll just move on to other places eventually.

If you think that this is hypothetical, it is not, and it'snot neccessarily for the good of the public, as some of the existing specialists are already overbooked, and have to send overflow to other cities. (Better to have a competitor not-so-close-to home, eh?)

This is perhaps why some people hire on the basis of diversity: they can hire people who won't compete in their own fields for limited jobs, as many of those potential competitors have been steered away from academic provinces that are held and defended like fiefdoms.

"I suspect that low-level academic production/lower standards didn't start with the hiring of non-white males. Just a thought. "

There will always be disappointments in how faculty hires turn out, because people aren't perfectly predictable. This sets a baseline failure rate for an academic hiring process that uses academic excellence as its primary criterion and does its job as well as it can possibly be done.

But if your process hires people it wouldn't otherwise choose on academic quality alone, be it because of political affinity, skin color, spousal hirng, or anything else, then the already non-zero failure rate will go up, perhaps by a little, perhaps by a lot. In the case of Duke, it looks like it went up be a lot.

The impossibility of fixing all imperfections doesn't mean you shouldn't fix what you can.

I gather you're new to the blog: this point has been a central argument of the Group profile series. The Group profile posts are indexed (just click on the "Group Profile" label at the bottom of the Chafe post today).

As the the more general issue of "diversity" lowering standards, it appears that you're new to the general debate: this has been a major issue (on both sides) in law, politics, and higher education over the past 20 years or so. To get a sense of the two sides of the debate, you might want to take a look at the briefs in the Grutter and Gratz Supreme Court cases from 2003. For organizations that have been critical of the "diversity" agenda, you might want to look at NAS and ACTA; for organizations that support the "diversity" agenda, you might want to look at the AAC&U.

I should add that any school that attempts to diversify its faculty has to be willing to part ways with ones that don't meet the institution's standards for acceptable performance/tenure, either during the probationary period (if you have a mid-point review) or at tenure.

If the campus is sufficiently politicized, or if, as seems to be the case at Duke, the T&P criteria explicitly allow the administration to take race/gender etc into consideration, cutting loose weak faculty who add to diversity will be very difficult.

I should add that it's also unfortunate that the same sorts of "expanding the pool" good affirmative action some places use doesn't extend to intellectual diversity. Even as someone in the intellectual minority, I'm completely opposed to treating conservative and libertarian academics as victims in need of quotas and special consideration. However, I do think that universities should be as cognizant of both searching for an intellectually diverse faculty and treating faculty with minority views as adding in important ways to the students' learning as they claim to be about race, gender, and ethnicity.

Chafe brags about his contribution to the 'diversity' of Duke. I'd like to see him brag about another contribution of his - namely, the cost incurred by his hand-picked professor Kim Curtis after she flunked students in her class, plus the cost incurred by Chafe and his fellow Gang members after they attacked students on the whole campus. I'd also like to see the cost Chafe, et al. inflicted on alumnae donations as a result. In my opinion, that is the true contribution of Chafe to Duke.

"Racialized admissions never cost a rich white kid his chance at a college education, and racialized hiring never cost a rich white youngster his chance to make a good living."

Ask any counselor from the private schools and/or high performing public schools about how over-qualified students are being systemically excluded from PUBLIC Universities.

This form of discrimination is to the long- and short- term detriment of Texas and the benefit of other schools outside the state. Those schools are quick to offer in-state tuition and other incentives for Texas student who otherwise should and would go to Texas public universities were they not unjustly excluded based on the random 10%.

(For those not familiar, the top 10% of a graduating class is an automatic at schools like UT/TAMU/etc. The effect is that kids with SATs north of 1300 with AP classes are being excluded so that kids with lesser credentials are accepted. Ironically, the goal - diveristy - has not been impacted and minority admissions remain at a constant level.

They Universities have had to modify; remedial teachings, incentives to encourage students to graduate in four years, make-up for legacy donors who quit giving, etc.

Over 70% of the UT freshman class are 10% students.

Arguably some in the bottom 10% of some of Texas finest schools are better prepared and more deserving than even the top 1% coming out of other schools. Ironically the problem is exacerbated when top 1% students from the elite preps choose to attend UT/TAMU vs. other elite Universities - the gap widens.

This assumes the numbers have not been fraudlently modified. A faulty assumption given widespread cheating has been demonstrated in standardized testing in Texas.

The children of "rich" parents don't always get what they have earned in terms of an education.

10:49So you agree with me that a racial variation on the theme of Title IX should be implemented, so that each sports team will be represented with a racial component similar to - (if not equal to) - the racial makeup of the student body?

I wonder which sports will suffer most? Swimming, or basketball? (swimming should work out ok, actually, answering my own question in advance; ask Coach K if he could live with those "diversity" standards on his team...)

This is not--especially after the passage of 17 months--a....(That depends upon what the meaning of "is".....is.).....exercise.

Most here need no coaching in reading comprehension.

Chafe and Holloway said what they said. They wrote what they wrote. They slandered and libeled students at their university.

There are no gray areas on this one.

KC used the word "gush" because the sycophantic, emotionally-gluttonous Holloway responded with excited agreement to Chafe's race-and-gender-baiting positions.

KC used the word "glib" quite accurately because you have to be a self-serving, insensitive. and archaic piece of superfluous sludge to respond the way Chafe has throughout.....given the magnitude of damage he and his poorly-credentialed helpers have caused.

Nice try, but the Lacrosse Hoax isn't a situation in which the predictable verbal gymnastics carry any weight.

9:48" 'Sexual stereotyping' at the LAX party? I've always found it very ironic that it was undoubtedly an excess of PC thinking that landed the LAXers in the mess they found themselves in that night. "

----------

You are all too painfully and completely correct, which is why most people are afraid to even consider the implications of what you are saying.

Regrettably, it is an unacceptable defense to say, no matter how clearly it's true, that "Crystal was a truly ugly whore that no self-respecting white (or black, for that matter) athlete would even want to touch."

To a huge extent, that no one wants to acknowledge, this whole mess was in fact put into motion by the scummy pimp who lied on the phone to the LAX players about the race and quality of the sex workers who would show up at the door.

As you, say, once the black prostitute and her black dancer colleague showed up, what were the guys to do? Would it not be more "racist" to send them packing, because they were (butt-fugly and) black, than to, as Tim Tyson so unfailingly howls, "exploit" them by pretending that their foul presence was entertaining?

The guys made the best of a (literally) ugly situation, and they really paid the price, times a million.

Use of the term ‘metanarrative’ and all it implies when used by such notable postmodern ‘intellectuals’ as Karla F.C. Holloway and Wahneema Lubiano is very well known and understood by most (perhaps not all) commenters here. I would suggest that it might be you that lacks knowledge as to why the term ‘metanarrative’ has become a running joke here at DIW. To further your knowledge is this area: Duke's Tenured Vigilantes

I'd like to restate the medical hiring dilemma as it relates to diversity:

A town has a cardiologist who has a practice of his own; he's extremely busy, and can't see all the patients that need his services. He sends them to another city.

A second cardiologist wants to open shop in town; the first cardiologist actively works against the newcomer, fearing the competition, and the newcomer is unable to obtain a "certificate of need." Result: the second cardiologist needs to look elsewhere.

Meanwhile, a specialist in dyspareunia wants to open up a practice: not enough people in town to support this newcomer, but no one opposes the new practice, since they won't compete with anyone. (note: I'm not making light of dyspareunia; it's merely an example.)

In the competition for jobs that are fiercely competed over, diversity hiring has meant that some prospective academics have chosen fields where they will not upset the "old-boy system;" it's like signing a non-competition contract.

Not much competition for positions in racialist/gender studies...(yet.) One day, people like Wahneema won't be able to skate on her bona fides.

"Racialized admissions never cost a rich white kid his chance at a college education, and racialized hiring never cost a rich white youngster his chance to make a good living."

Ask any counselor from the private schools and/or high performing public schools about how over-qualified students are being systemically excluded from PUBLIC Universities.

First, I agree with your over-arching point, but it fails to contradict what I said.

I am familiar with the "10% rule" and I will accept, for the sake of argument, that it is an equivalent of what I called "racialized admissions."

But remember what I said: "a rich kid his chance at a college education". Yes, some rich white kids in Texas will not be able to attend super-cheap PUBLIC (your caps) colleges. But because of their wealth, they will attend some college somewhere. It is the poor whites who, if excluded by racialized admissions from attending "super-cheap PUBLIC" colleges, will not be able to attend college at all.

Ok, so the casual reader should go back to your what? first post? to find out what study you got your information from? Or are you simply asserting that this is the case? I understand that many of the people who post here assume it to be the case.

11:13 is absolutely 100% correct, as I'm a parent of 2 high school males, both white. One with nearly-perfect SATs but probably won't be able to get into UT or TAMU because he's not in the top 10% of one of the top high schools in the state. We have a cabin near Coldspring, TX (one of the poorest school districts in the state) and if he went to school there, he'd be in either school in a heartbeat, only because the 10% is so much lower, all to promote diversity. Of course, hundreds of these kids are flunking out of college because they're woefully unprepared.

And even though I'm a Duke alum, and lived in the Triangle for 7 of the last 8 years, having just moved back to Texas, neither son's going to Duke, I promise you that. Not in that environment!

Agreeing with 9:54 -- Re: The notion that a whitewash is possible by characterizing the ''88 as a radical, "fringe" element of the broader faculty.

In the fall of 2006, there were 618 professors in the Arts & Sciences (Source: www.duke.edu). Although not fully examined, it appears that 86 of the Group of '88 were professors in the Arts & Sciences. How anyone could assert that 14% of any group could be considered "fringe" is beyond credible, especially when it appears that this Group of '88 were the vocal core of a much larger group of sympathizers. One should note the consistency between Chafe's stated mission --"There has remained a tendency to think of Duke as a place of wealth, whiteness and privilege," he said. "We aim to change that." " -- and the memorialized philosophies of the Group of '88 -- philosophies memorialized not only in the Listening Statement, but also in their scholarship work product (or lack thereof).

I suggest that Chafe's legacy will be much more than the operating deficit affecting faculty hiring. If that was all he had left, the problems could be resolved.

Indeed, it appears that the entire character of Duke University has changed in the years since I was there, and not for the better (according to my world view, however right, left or circular it is). Chafe appears to have been at the helm of institutionalizing a diversity agenda that, like ground water contamination, will be very difficult to reverse. In Chafe's world, diversity evidently means absolving one's concept of societal guilt by allowing and by promoting a minority to sound as a vocal majority.

I thought "diversity" was not about race or creed or class or gender. I thought it was simply about respect for those who are and/or were different -- to always try to walk in the other man's shoes -- whatever or wherever one's own shoes tread.________________________________

I wonder how many donors to Duke's annual fund write their checks while recalling their fond memories of a Duke they once knew, rather than the Duke and Durham reality of today, or as important, the almost inevitable Duke University of the future?

“The prevailing spirit of the present age seems to be the spirit of skepticism and captiousness, of suspicion and distrust in private judgment; a dislike of all established forms, merely because they are established, and of old paths, because they are old.” —Samuel Johnson

Not only do the Klan of 88 and their abettors "dislike all established forms", their modus operandi is to deconstruct. What shall they replace the destruction with to leave their scorched earth better than it was left them? They are silent.

Not only are they silent but they don't allow others, even peers, to critique their efforts. One might suggest they operated in a vacuum, but they don't even self-critique their own lame-brained theories.

I must say I really appreciate KC's diligence and monumental effort(s) in exposing these frauds, and as important, I really appreciate the frauds continued exposition of their own feeble thinking.

It's the ones (faculty) who were lucky and missed signing the original statement and remain silent and in hiding that remain worrisome.

To JLS @ 1:00: #3 was VERY funny! Which brings me to my first point. Chafe is seeking to abridge our First Amendment Right to Comedy. He wants to still all voices who say anything "derogatory" dealing with race, sex or gender. Would that apply to Homer Simpson, Eric Cartman and Archie Bunker as well? Who determines what is "derogatory"? If Chafe is to be the judge, then I protest, as his mind doesn't seem to work right. [See second point below]. _______________

My second point deals with two of Chafe's statements. Both of the statements, to me, show a mind morbidly narrow and unfocused. Moreover, these are not extemporaneous comments from a television interview; rather, they are written-down, and supposedly, thought-out-beforehand comments. The first is from Chafe's 5/3/06 e-mail response to K.C. Johnson. The context is this:

1. Chafe had already written his March 31, 2006 inflammatory Chronicle opinion piece prejudging the boys as rapists.

2. On the same day his e-mail is sent to K.C., Chafe is published in the Chronicle of Higher Education with another inflammatory piece about the Duke fake rape.

Chafe wrote in his e-mail:

"My concern is with our campus culture, which is precisely what my article addressed. Any further comment about the criminal charges, before a judicial process occurs, is simply buying into a media circus which I do not wish to do."

What kind of mind would condemn a "media circus" after having joined it FOR THE SECOND TIME on the SAME DAY his "condemning" e-mail is sent?

The second statement by Chafe is from his March 31, 2006 opinion piece in the Duke Chronicle. Chafe wrote:

"That is why most lynchings of black men in the late 19th and early 20th century were justified by accusing black men of lusting after white women - EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT SUCH ATTACKS EVER TOOK PLACE." (emphasis added)(irony in original).

This statement by Chafe came a grand total of 17 DAYS after the fake rape. The only evidence that Chafe had was hearsay, speculation and his own biases.

I don't see how it is possible to believe what this man ever says, as he is on record in the most hypocritical, biased and unreasoned fashion - which could be forgiven - if he was in the least bit cognizant of his transgressions, biases and complete lack of logic. ___________________

"Academic evolution is as hard as it was for K.C. Johnson to hold that first toad under water, Shouting: 'Breath, damn you!'" ON THE ORIGIN OF PC's (C. Darwin, 1860). MOO! Gregory

Below is Billy-Bob Ashley's weekly personal diary entry. Like clockwork, he references his wife and family members.

There's even an air-kiss to Brodhead in this delightfully homespun offering. Life goes on for the players from the Hoax:

Rolling down the window passes into mists of history

Aug 26, 2007

Every year, as I've noted here before, I await with some eagerness Beloit College's "Mindset List."

The list is the brainchild of Tom McBride, a humanities professor at the Wisconsin college, and Ron Nief, its public affairs director. For a decade, they have compiled the list as a lighthearted effort to remind faculty that they came of age in quite a different era than did their incoming students.

As the university's press release said of this year's edition:

"Its 70 items provide a look at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today's first-year students, most of them born in 1989."

Driving home the point that references that are a common language to one generation will be a mysterious dialect to another, this year's list is prefaced with the reminder that "for them, Alvin Aily, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead."

Aside from the fact that I'm easily humored by historical and cultural trivia, the list and its purpose serve as good reminders to newspaper editors that, we, too, often occupy a different generational vantage point than our readers. A workaday reminder of that often comes when some aging cultural icon dies.

This year, the Beloit list probably had more resonance for me than ever. My son, class of 2011 himself, is winding up his first week as a freshman at UNC Chapel Hill.

As thousands of you know and others eventually will, that day a son or daughter heads off to college is a seismic change. Some -- my wife, Pat, for example -- see it coming well in advance. Others, less prone to introspection -- me, for example -- don't fully realize it until it's almost upon us.

Either way, it's a sobering realization that a parent-child relationship has shifted. Having just the two of us at the dinner table, uncommon for 18 years, will now be the norm again.

And while our son's only a few miles away, and while I know we'll see him often, Duke President Richard Brodhead captured the new dynamic wittily in his welcome to Duke freshmen last week.

Directing his remarks for a moment not at the students but their parents, Brodhead acknowledged it was day of mixed emotions. A day of pride, yes, but also a day when they realize their son or daughter "abandons you and leaves home to start another life."

"I feel your pain," Brodhead said, "but I want to warn you, things will get worse. A mother reported that toward the end of our rather extended Christmas vacation, as the time approached for her freshman son to return to Duke, he casually remarked, oblivious to the damage to her feelings: 'I've really enjoyed being with the family, but I'm about ready to go back home.' "

With that unsettling prospect in the back of our minds, those of us who have just sent our offspring on to college, it is a good time for the diversion of the Beloit list.

This year's list reminds us that today's college freshmen "never 'rolled down' a car window" and that "'off the hook' has never had anything to do with a telephone."

The phone reference, by the way, is a reminder that college dorm life sure isn't what it used to be. For my generation, phones were down the hall, at best. Andrew and his roommates have a phone jack in their room, as do, I suppose, all students. And, like many, they'll not bother to have a phone installed because they use their cell phones all the time.

This is, after all, a freshman class, the Beloit list notes, that is "always texting 1 n other."

Some items on this year's list are reminders of the changing geopolitical world in which we live.

"China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation. . .Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre."

Some are a reminder of change for the better. Today's students, the list notes, are likely to ask:

rrhamiltion, yes I think I understand your point. The low-income white is the one who get's their hand slammed in the door where others have other alternatives. They, in the end, are at the very bottom of the food chain. Right?

Thanks for clarifying.

I'm more interested in the knowledge captial being lost. The best are not getting admitted.

Is it any wonder that attorneys for the lacrosse players so falsely accused were asking for a change of venue? What a joke this kind of intellectualizing is. I once had a professor who, with his PhD, knew everything about the 1928 election. The trouble was it wasn't 1928. It sounds more like 1984.

I didn't understand your post. Do you mean in Gender Studies programs or do you mean positions that explicitly advertise "Gender & Sexuality"? In a number of fields, for example, history, you might apply for a position in cultural history or medical history, among others, with such interests. But, the latter is a very popular field, so you'd be up against lots of other cultural historians.

A lot of people compete for jobs in gender studies; it's a very popular academic subfield. I suspect you could find out how many undergraduates/graduate students get a certificate if not majoring/minoring in it.

How about this for an equivalently logical statement...."We appreciate the efforts of those who used the fact that Johnny ordered a dipped cone today at Dairy Queen instead of his usual non-dipped to raise issues of discrimination and violence."

11:13 inre: "...Of course, hundreds of these kids are flunking out of college because they're woefully unprepared..."

It is a bit worse since we, through taxes, are forced to pay for the schools to establish mechanisms to retain these students who should not have been admitted in the first place. I have no problem with the admissions decisions if the applicant pool that particular year is of a lesser stature.

This diversity policy also drives up housing costs since there are fewer alternatives to handle the excess demand since so many are not graduating in four years.

The cost of housing means students must live further away to find less expensive alternatives which of course drives up the transportation costs and creates additional duress if the student also factors-in a job.

Echoing Ralph Phelan's earlier (11:08am) request: anonymous commenters referring to their earlier remarks could make their insights more comprehensible by picking a pseudonym. Otherwise, it's a great deal of trouble to figure out the identity of the "I" in "As I said in my previous post..."

1203: I meant that positions in Gender Studies and similar fields get good app pools but also that positions in the "traditional" disciplines that advertise course/research interests that include gender/race etc also get large app pools.

Of course academia in general has this phenomenon in all but the most specialized areas.

And large pools say nothing one way or the other about quality. My point was just that there is competition there.

No Peace at 12:10--Lots of kids of all races and economic backgrounds are flunking out of university. Many of them flunk out because they are unprepared, although a number flunk out because they don't care. Some return later.

Look to your primary and secondary schools. Make sure they are providing everyone the best possible basic education.

If some of the people who vent their spleen here would spend half that energy on working for better education for all, we'd be in great shape.

While KC Johnson and William Chafe may not agree on much, they do appear to concur that, properly executed, diversity hiring initiatives would create a "level playing field" that would lead to "equality of results" in terms of the metric of concern (the percentage of faculty hires who are blacks, gays, Han Chinese, women, Slovenes, or members of another group of interest).

It logically follows that when equality of results are not achieved, the hiring institution must have failed to create equality of opportunity. The Usual Suspects have indeed played large roles in the past, so it's a short hop to assume that they are the main causes of hiring problems in the present.

The picture becomes much cloudier if we allow that each group of human beings may not have the same mix of individuals with particular talents and inclinations as does every other group of people.

"Good social policy can be based on premises that have nothing to do with scientific truth. The premise that is supposed to undergird all of our social policy, the founders’ assertion of an unalienable right to liberty, is not a falsifiable hypothesis. But specific policies based on premises that conflict with scientific truths about human beings tend not to work. Often they do harm.

"One such premise is that the distribution of innate abilities and propensities is the same across different groups. The statistical tests for uncovering job discrimination assume that men are not innately different from women, blacks from whites, older people from younger people, homosexuals from heterosexuals, Latinos from Anglos, in ways that can legitimately affect employment decisions... The assumption of no innate differences among groups suffuses American social policy. That assumption is wrong.

When the outcomes that these policies are supposed to produce fail to occur, with one group falling short, the fault for the discrepancy has been assigned to society. It continues to be assumed that better programs, better regulations, or the right court decisions can make the differences go away. That assumption is also wrong.

"Hence this essay. Most of the following discussion describes reasons for believing that some group differences are intractable. I shift from 'innate' to 'intractable' to acknowledge how complex is the interaction of genes, their expression in behavior, and the environment. 'Intractable' means that, whatever the precise partitioning of causation may be (we seldom know), policy interventions can only tweak the difference at the margins."

-- end excerpt --

The points Murray makes are quite relevant to many of Chafe's statements on Duke's hiring process that are linked in the body of today's post.

Pay attention to Mr. Vick, and learn. He screwed up, but has the character to make (IMHO) a sincere apology. I don't condone his actions, and he is paying the price. Once he has paid his debt, I hope folks will let this young man move on with his life.

Steven Horwitz said... "If the campus is sufficiently politicized, or if, as seems to be the case at Duke, the T&P criteria explicitly allow the administration to take race/gender etc into consideration, cutting loose weak faculty who add to diversity will be very difficult."

In such cases, what mechanisms do the university or academia as a whole offer to fix the problem? Have you any suggestions at all?

"I should add that it's also unfortunate that the same sorts of "expanding the pool" good affirmative action some places use doesn't extend to intellectual diversity. Even as someone in the intellectual minority, I'm completely opposed to treating conservative and libertarian academics as victims in need of quotas and special consideration."

If not, what do you propose to change the current situation and trends? I do not consider allowing them to continue as they are an acceptable option.

"However, I do think that universities should be as cognizant of both searching for an intellectually diverse faculty and treating faculty with minority views as adding in important ways to the students' learning as they claim to be about race, gender, and ethnicity."

Nice that you want that. I do too, as a university without diversity of opinion is of no use to society as a whole. And it therefore deserves no support from the rest of us (i.e. research contracts, tax-free status, subsidized loans for its students ...) How do you propose politicized faculties fix themselves, before outside forces intervene to fix things in ways you might not like?

no justice, no peace said... rrhamiltion, yes I think I understand your point. The low-income white is the one who get's their hand slammed in the door where others have other alternatives. They, in the end, are at the very bottom of the food chain. Right?

Thanks for clarifying.

I'm more interested in the knowledge captial being lost. The best are not getting admitted.

8/27/07 12:01 PM

I certainly understand your frustration. I must say though that I am not nearly as offended by "top 10% rule" as I am the straight-out "race rule" of most U.S. universities. The reason: As a quasi-libertarian, I have some problems with much state involvement with education. But if a state is going to involve itself, then I don't blame the state for offering low-cost college education to its middle- and lower-classes. After all, there is no reason that UT and TAMU should be getting students that should be going (and can afford to go) to Baylor, SMU, Rice, and TCU.

Anonymous said... 11:13 is absolutely 100% correct, as I'm a parent of 2 high school males, both white. One with nearly-perfect SATs but probably won't be able to get into UT or TAMU because he's not in the top 10% of one of the top high schools in the state. We have a cabin near Coldspring, TX (one of the poorest school districts in the state) and if he went to school there, he'd be in either school in a heartbeat, only because the 10% is so much lower, all to promote diversity. Of course, hundreds of these kids are flunking out of college because they're woefully unprepared.

And even though I'm a Duke alum, and lived in the Triangle for 7 of the last 8 years, having just moved back to Texas, neither son's going to Duke, I promise you that. Not in that environment!

12:14, inre: "...the BEST ARE being admitted", One clearly does not understand the issues related to the Texas school system as it relates to the 10% admissions policy. The best are clearly NOT getting admitted.

This is an affirmative action plan that has failed. Minority enrollment has not increased, regardless of their credentials.

Sadly the structure is such that there may never be enough legislative votes to overturn the law. Why? Becuase so many Texas school districts are underperforming and beneficiarys.

One can be certain the Chinese and East Indians aren't hobbling their education systems with this nonsense.

It might be a minor point but I would like to clarify something regarding the Medical field and the reality of a "Certificate of Need". These are generated by the Federal Medicare program to allow hospitals and Physicians to bill Medicare for certain expensive proceedures (usually diagnostic) done in a locality. Since the real money in Medicine these days does not involve Medicare patients, the lack of such a certificate means very little. The biggest actual barrier to competition from newcomers is longstanding patterns of referral among specialists. Alliances matter. But for primary care Docs who simply advertize and open their door there are hardly any barriers at all. Except that opening an office practice is very expensive especially considering the lag between time of service and collection dates - all the while paying rent,staff, etc.

Professor Horwitz 11:43,I may be nuts, but at least I'm not a "scholar" of race and/or gender. (Sleeping at a Holiday Inn Express may be a better qualification for holding a job.) But that wasn't my point. There may be lots of people trained for that kind of academia, much as there are lots of people TRAINED for Massage Therapy, but many are unqualified. On Massage Therapy - (I know a fair amount on the subject): lots of people go through the training, few of 'em know anything-about-anything.

As for certain studies: how do you explain Wahneema? First come, first served? Like a line at Burger King?

The free market will eventually right things, IMO: that's because education is a BUSINESS, not a knighthood. I know lots of Recreation Majors who can't find much to do, except when they're lucky enough to land a job in Parks and Rec, or to work in nursing homes (certainly a noble cause, so I'm not knocking it.) Race/Gender studies will either begin to produce, or it will become another educational fad.

I was saying that the agenda had skewed the faculty on pedagogical and ideological matters.

That is an important distinction that I believe some have totally missed in KC's writing here. And, the discussion of scholarship with respect to Chafe is this:

His is not a failure of scholarship but rather, of management. When he rose to a position of management, he failed, pure and simple.

All of us have seen people who have suceeded in the basic tasks of a profession, and often times those highly skilled in scholarship in an educational institution are not those necessarily suited to managing in that profession.

When trained scholars become Deans and begin to assume responsibility for departmental hiring and promotion policy decisions, allocation of resources, budget formation, etc. they are managing and NOT teaching. They may or may not suceed as managers, and there were signs as reported in Chafe's 2002 address that he was in trouble.

Apart from the overt focus on diversity as KC noted, the 2002 article also reports that, "Chafe said discussions are underway to slightly increase the number of undergraduates by about 50 students per class, creating $2 to 4 million in additional revenues."

Huh?????

You have a manager who is comfortable with admitting a forecast of a 4 million dollar revenue stream that has a variance of 200 per cent?

How many of you would be comfortable with accepting maintenance on your car from a mechanic who told you that a repair would cost between $2,000.00 and $4,000.00? How many of you would then be comfortable in publicly reporting this forecast to your partners and constituency?

Small wonder then that the editorial on Chafe's "legacy" as Dean said, "Regrettably, Chafe's major legacy will be the Arts and Science budget deficit, which threatens to subsume the school and has necessitated a hiring freeze and led to occasional talks of cutting back the number of faculty positions.

The bottom line in this entire discussion of these folks obsessed with race, gender and class is that their very narrow and demonstrably racist, sexist, and classist agenda is harmful to scholarship and it is even far more harmful to management of a university.

This obsession has driven the legitimate efforts to achieve better diversity totally and completely out of balance.

We can debate forever the efficacy of some of the scholarship of the 88 but what their actions and words in this shameful incident, and the lack of management authority over them, really tell us is that Duke has a number of people who have no "business" managing a university.

Arizona's approach to diversity is different from that of the Texas public higher education system. The exorbitantly paid (by taxpayers' money) president of Arizona State University receives a large bonus if he can increase Hispanic enrollment at the university. The increased enrollment creates a need for more Chicano/a studies courses and more Chicano professors in history, literature, sociology, and political science.

I have followed the facts and the statements closely from the start, and have given a great deal of thought to all of it -- seeking out subtleties and complexities that would allow such "intelligent" people to be so completely and utterly wrong, and so childishly unable to admit it.

And, after considering any and all more complicated answers, I have decided it comes down to 3 things.

EGO, EGO, and.....EGO!!!!

Sequence of events:

1) They decide, for whatever reason, that the LAXers are guilty. For some it is their own natural (and despicable) bigotries, for some it is the convincing lies of Mike Nifong and David Addison. For many, it is because the latter so effectively feed the ignorant and frenzied cravings of the former.

For whatever reason, they call it wrong -- dead, flat-out wrong.

2) They cannot admit this. They will not admit it. They invent all kinds of alternate explanations of what they said, and why they said it.

But the excuses all come down to one commodity: bullshit. There's no better word for it -- bullshit. They were wrong, and remain unable to say they were wrong.

Why? We can spin theories forever, but it comes down to this:

EGO, EGO and....EGO.

3) In truth, the 88 span a considerable intellectual range, from brilliant to bonehead.

But they have 3 things in common:

EGO, EGO and ... EGO.

They were each wrong for different reasons, and to different extents -- but they will not admit it, because of:

I actually do understand the 10 percent rule. If you oppose it, do you want to accept kids in university on only SATs/ACT scores combined with AP/IB courses, say required three by the end of junior year? Only standardized exams can make up for differentials in grading but some really bright kids do badly on standardized exams. Some poor kids thrive in universities as City College showed us during the interwar era and the 1950s.

State universities are always extremely competitive, becaue they're cheap for the parents, since subsidized by the taxpayers.

Tonight I'll go home to my 5 year old daughter. I will tell her she has 2 choices in choosing who to learn from. Those people who teach or those who preach. It's easy to tell the difference between the two. The preacher doesn't ground their lesson in fact.

Hnman,Hate to contradict you, but CON (Certificate Of Need) is state-administered, and was federally mandated in 1974, repealed in '87 and continues in 36 states.

There are arguments for and against CON, neither of which I will parse here, but what I'd pointed out is that it has provably been used as a tool to limit competition. While that is one of the chief objections to CON, I'm not opposed to it on those grounds, since those problems are not always evident - and when they are, it's usually in smaller cities with good ol' boy systems in place. There are few remedies for good 'ol boy systems.

You are right that it doesn't apply so much to doc-in-the-boxes, but it does apply to outpatient surgery centers and to things like pain clinics.

Since it is a state deal now, Medicare isn't a reason for or against CON.

Apart from the overt focus on diversity as KC noted, the 2002 article also reports that, "Chafe said discussions are underway to slightly increase the number of undergraduates by about 50 students per class, creating $2 to 4 million in additional revenues."

Huh?????

You have a manager who is comfortable with admitting a forecast of a 4 million dollar revenue stream that has a variance of 200 per cent?

You try doing budget forecasting when your revenue stream depends not only on the whims of 17 year olds but the income levels of their parents and what the market value of your endowment is.

Seriously. The complexity and uncertainties of college admissions are greater than those of many other industries. The problem of year-to-year variance is huge.

In such cases, what mechanisms do the university or academia as a whole offer to fix the problem? Have you any suggestions at all?

It's the same answer to your other questions as well (about intellectual diversity and the like):

Get involved. Pay attention to what your alma mater does. Pay attention to what your kids' schools do. Encourage young people with different ideas to go into academia (or even high school teaching). Support people and institutions that have the desire and ability to change things from the inside.

One other point: I find it interesting that you consider intellectual diversity to be a "sine qua non" but you and others seem to be arguing that the problem with diversity by race/ethnicity/gender is that it hires "lower-quality" faculty. Would you support a university who said "we want to diversify our faculty intellectually" and then hired lower-quality conservative and libertarian faculty to do it?

End of the day, that's one big problem with "intervening" in universities via the state to promote intellectual diversity: it puts quality second.

As KC has so amply demonstrated, lots of sunshine will do more than the heavy and dull fist of the state, esp. when other folks get control of the state and use it to promote *their* ends in higher ed.

What you really need to do is go out and start banging some pots in front of the homes of lots of deans and presidents. ;)

I think a basically-free education is one of the great hallmarks of the United States. Even at a college level, anyone who really wants a degree can afford one.

That said, I don't think the answer is to guarantee anyone that gets out of any high school in a huge state like Texas an automatic spot in college. SATs should play a role since someone with some basic smarts should still do better than someone without, regardless of the school attended.

There are many other possible solutions that would be fair without mandating quotas.

Just to show that college presidents are capable of admitting they made a mistake...

Our president did not sign the recent very public statement protesting the UCU boycott of Israeli academics. When that fact was called to his attention in a campus-wide email today, he publicly offered a reasonable explanation for why he hadn't (which I will not go into) and concluded by saying that in retrospect he was wrong and that he should have signed it (and offered good reasons for why he should have). He will now add his name to it if possible.

They're not all spineless weasels, you know. ;)

Why it has been so hard for so many to admit mistakes continues to be the most mysterious and disappointing part of this whole fiasco. A simple admission of error (even without a request for forgiveness - or a claim to have found Jesus [see M. Vick]) goes a very long way toward healing and forgiveness and reclaiming one's integrity in the eyes of others.

Steven Horwitz 9:46 said... ...The idea that the desire to diversify the faculty *necessarily* leads to positions being reallocated to the humanities and the social sciences doesn't necessarily hold. It depends on how the institution does business....At my place, admittedly much smaller and less elite than Duke, we have been attempting (with some success) to diversify our faculty for a number of years. However, the allocation of faculty lines is decided upon by a committee made up of faculty from across campus and the VPAA rather than the VPAA by him/herself. I've been on that committee for many years and our debates over how to allocate tenure-track lines mostly boil down to the quality of the case a department can make with respect to curricular needs and student demand/enrollment pressures, with some additional attention paid to those proposed positions that might be more attractive to diverse job candidates (e.g., something like a position dedicated to studying Islam).::Steven Horwitz makes two important points about the decision model used at his university that may be overlooked.

First, the allocation of faculty lines is decided upon by a committee made up of faculty from across the campus. The Vice President does not make those decision in isolation.

That seems to be a problem at Duke. The command and control management systems seems to be ingrained across the campus at Duke...including the new bicycle program announced today in the Duke Chronicle. Not a word was written about the decision making PROCESS for that new program.

So much for student engagement.

A second issue considered is student demand/enrollment pressures yet we hear very little about enrollment consideration at Duke.

Who on earth is taking these courses once we get past the required writing courses?

The issues we are looking at today are management issues as 1:43 said and I believe it is unfair to 'turn on' the faculty if the administrative management model is flawed.

psych 3:12 said... ...KC...My mom is a graduate of CCNY from I believe 1956. ...I guess I am asking you to comment on whether my parents perspective has any accuracy...::I'll bet lunch tomorrow that KC's Mom like my Mom gave away all of her stupid children.

I would not touch that question without input from at least twenty scholars who would agree to sign off on their critique of your Mom's observations.

Psych--CUNY was, if nothing else, much cheaper than NYU. It was a very, very important tool for upward mobility and provided an excellent education for several generations of New Yorkers with limited resources.

"Duke Students for an Ethical Duke to host KC Johnson, professor of history at Brooklyn College, co-author of “Until Proven Innocent” and author of "Durham-in-Wonderland," for a speech in Page Auditorium Sept. 11."

will anyone be video taping the speech and posting to you tube or to this blog?

12:02: I'd rather hear about the "Gay Mayan Flying Phallus" myself. Especially if there are pictures.

of course you would, 88er. no need to venture out into the real world at all.

best thing I can tell you is that if YOU find yourself in a similar miscarriage of justice, don't worry. We will be here for you too. maybe thats the real difference between K.C. and his fans and the 88 and theirs.

You try doing budget forecasting when your revenue stream depends not only on the whims of 17 year olds but the income levels of their parents and what the market value of your endowment is.

Seriously. The complexity and uncertainties of college admissions are greater than those of many other industries. The problem of year-to-year variance is huge.

Steve, I can agree with you to a point. However, if you read the article, you'll note that this was an income stream derived from adding 20 students per class. It was not an income stream dependant on the market value of the endowment.

Duke has far more applicants than class positions, and if a few "whims" happen or family checks bounce they have more than enough replacements and particularly with "early enrollment," time.

Given those facts, I'd expect the forecast for this particular budget revenue to be a hell of a lot closer than a variance of 200%, Doctor. I'd fire a forecaster who could not be more accurate than that, and if it was truly impossible, I'd surely NEVER report to anyone in public that my "forecast" was plus or minus 200%!

Thanks for both comments - the former and latter, since the former made me clarify my muddy comments, and the latter because it shows you are very considerate.

Professor Horwitz rightly pointed out that there are "stacks" of resumes for positions in gender/ethnic studies, and also pointed out that while there were great numbers of applicants, "large pools say nothing about quality." I agree, and I'm glad he pointed out the difference: I was wrong about the number of competitors. (I was about half-off, like a sale at Walgreens.)

My point was that the more deeply vested studies tend to have a better pool of applicants, and that the competition was at a higher level, and that those who are already invested (but without tenure) are probably happy to see other academics choose "silly-studies" and "angry studies" and so forth. Less competition for tenure - (but still the inevitable competition for dept. bucks.)

That's where the comparison with the CON was made, when I was a bit off and tangental, just as my comment about the competition was not well-stated. Glad this isn't a defense of a dissertation, or my @$$ would be fried.

You mentioned that you teach in Med School? Here's a better analogy with regard to scholarly intransigence - (though you might not agree with my interpretation of the FDA's motives:)

Some doctors who perform gastric bypass surgeries - (like those who performed total prostatectomies and didn't want to have to learn pelletization procedures)- don't wish to have to learn vagus nerve stimulator implantation techniques, (as are now the standard in Europe.) The FDA will "slow-mo" the approval process of the safer, reversible type of weight loss surgery, IMO because it puts American surgeons at a disadvantage, and gastric bypass surgeries are so profitable! (Is it possible that we're repeating the wrong refrain: "out with the good air, in with the bad?")

Horwitz is right. One Spook forgets the difference between net and gross. While gross tuition T associated with a gain of 50 students is clear (50T), the issue is net tuition, since financial aid is an offset to revenue. If no one is on any aid at all, then revenue is 50T. If all are on 100% grants, then net tuition is 0. Certainly the actual is between the two numbers, but it is not possible to predict except on average, and a pool of 50 off a waitlist is a biased sample.

RR Hamilton, inre: "...After all, there is no reason that UT and TAMU should be getting students that should be going (and can afford to go) to Baylor, SMU, Rice, and TCU..."

That sure doesn't look very Libertarian to me. If my child wants go to UT or TAMU and has the academic credentials to get in and succeed. He/She should get in.

Wealth and ability to pay should not be a factor. Besides the private schools may not offer what the public schools do.

Having said that I know TCU's admissions/applications are going through the roof as a direct result of the 10% rule.

One last comment, the McCombs School and the Engineering School appear to be somewhat immune to the frauds. In the Liberal Arts, I know they are creating a Western Civ tract which about caused me to sieze up - an unexpected surprised.

To everyone else, excuse the side-tract regarding the Texas 10% rule. It is somewhat relevant as it is an affirmative action program, though it is not working as such.

You know, some may find this amazing -- but for me, the part I found most outraging was Chafe's dishonest commentary about the purported e-mail and phone calls he'd received. If it had really happened, he could have just said "I have received hateful e-mails and phone calls saying these things" and he'd have been believed. But he has to be dishonest, and make a charge that he has no evidence for claiming that it was "Bloggers who have targeted the 'Group of 88'" who were behind the alleged harassment. In its way, this is even more disgusting than the Group of 88's rush to judgement regarding the lacrosse case. In the lacrosse case, the G88 were simply believing Mangum when she selected victims for her frame that fit their prejudices. Here, Chafe knows that he knows nothing about who is committing harassment besides, of course, what they're angry about -- but he declares, as if it were fact, that it was "bloggers" who did it. Did he simply think that he could safely go from his prejudices about who would do such a thing to an actual accusation about who did such a thing? Or did he cynically decide that as long as he was getting harassment from an unknown source, he might as well turn it into ammunition against his own enemies? Or, most cynically of all, do we have any reason to trust that he wasn't lying about receiving harassment, just as he was lying about knowing who was behind the harassment?

I should clarify: I am not in favor of the "10% rule". I agree that there should be only one way for all Texas students to get in.

When I was admitted in the 1970s, it was simple: If you were in the top 1/2 of your HS graduating class (not me!), then you needed an SAT/ACT score of such-and-such. If you were in the bottom 1/2 of your HS graduating class (c'est moi)then you needed a much higher SAT/ACT score.

That said, I am tired of Big State Universities trying to be "World Class" institutions for the elites. That is not the proper role of taxpayer-supported higher education. Think of government education like government housing: Should we be happy if the government is building mansions to sell at low-cost to those who could afford to buy their own mansions?

This is not to say that government universities should be "low class". However, when the best and brightest among the state's upper economic class begins to clamor to get into Big State U than into comparable (but higher priced) private universities, that's when you know Big State U has gone too far.

I can recall back in the early-80s when SMU was creaming us in football because they had Eric Dickerson and Craig James, a SMU banner at one of the games reading "Our maids went to U.T." That's how it should be: let the rich go to SMU, etc. Leave the Big State U for the best and brightest of the working classes.

Anonymous @12:05 PM said... A lot of people compete for jobs in gender studies; it's a very popular academic subfield. I suspect you could find out how many undergraduates/graduate students get a certificate if not majoring/minoring in it.

If I was entering university today it would be near the top of my list.

Why? Because it would be the easiest pass imaginable. Simply parrot the rhetoric. My major problem would be restraining myself from alerting everybody else to the elephant permanently resident in the room.

One Spook @1:43PM said...That is an important distinction that I believe some have totally missed in KC's writing here. And, the discussion of scholarship with respect to Chafe is this:His is not a failure of scholarship but rather, of management. When he rose to a position of management, he failed, pure and simple. All of us have seen people who have suceeded in the basic tasks of a profession, and often times those highly skilled in scholarship in an educational institution are not those necessarily suited to managing in that profession.

The Peter Principle is a natural feature of beaurocracies and large systems. It is enhanced by affirmative action.

Horwitz is right. One Spook forgets the difference between net and gross.

No.

I'm not getting into an accounting math contest with anyone.

As *I* read the article, it was about a line item of an anticipated revenue stream from tuition by adding 20 students per class. it was reported as "between 2 million and 4 million."

I'm going to assume that Duke employs intelligent people who do financial forecasting. They have over 50 years of good data that accounts for whims and other variables, and they know how to do linear regression to predict the future assuming 20 students per class are added.

Bottom line: A good manager would NEVER accept such a forecast, let alone publicly report it showing a 200% variance.

I realize close only counts in horsehoes, hand grenades and hydrogen bombs, but as a manger I expect closer than plus or minus 200%!

Psych:Your Mom's memory is flawless. Before the advent of open admissions in the late 1960s during the Lindsay administration, getting into CCNY or any one of the other free, public colleges in New York City was considered a considerable achievement. When I graduated from High School in the early 1950s, one needed an 89 average to get into Brooklyn College, for example. A close friend of mine, now a respected dentist, failed that test and had to settle for NYU, much to his distaste, because it was an inferior institution and cost much more than the free tuition that Brooklyn, City College, Queens, or Hunter offered.

Steve: there may be a lot of competition for BS studies tenure-track slots, but you can bet that most of these job seekers are the bottom of the barrel. Hell, the so-called star professors in these fields would never make it in cognitively demanding disciplines. Can you see Cornel West doing innovative research in artificial intelligence? Give me a break! BS studies attracts stupid BS artists who are unable to compete for authentic academic positions.

the 10% rule in Texas, which is probably unconstitutional, is a quota system that rewards "minorities" who matriculate from schools where other low-performing "minorities" congregate. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to detect how racialist this "public policy" is.

Anonymous 2:26 said... ...I have followed the facts and the statements closely from the start, and have given a great deal of thought to all of it -- seeking out subtleties and complexities that would allow such "intelligent" people to be so completely and utterly wrong, and so childishly unable to admit it....And, after considering any and all more complicated answers, I have decided it comes down to 3 things....EGO, EGO, and.....EGO!!!!...EGO. ::The EGO Workshops offered by organizational development (OD) people were popular about ten years ago and they were quite fashionable with people who presented themselves as 'shy' and easily intimidated.

The workshops dried up when someone got around to noting that ego is always a 'real' consideration unless the person under discussion is dead.

Why do you suggest be done with all of these EGO problems? Any medicine available? Therapy?::GP

A defense of Elitism: We demand it of our children's teachers and schools, we depended upon it when we married our spouse, we opt for it when we dine out. We even are elitist about the blogs we read.

There is no reason a public University cannot be elite and attract the world's best students. With 50,000 there is plenty of room.

The notion that we must educate everyone...leave no child behind is bullshit. Education is a privelege and we should not dumb-down primary, secondary, or university for those that don't want to participate. Currently the system favors the marginal at the expense of the best.

This will have a long-term negative economic consequence.

Granted the best of the best can do as they please.

Regardless there isn't one damn thing the matter with striving to be elite. We all do it every day, with just about every decision we make, including the hypocrites like Chafe.

That is one thing that is so damn galling about what Brodhead and the BOT have done (are doing) to Duke. They are racing toward the bottom.

I don't know how you define "rich", but, as you know Texas isn't some third world cess pool there are an awful lot of people who have done all right. Suggesting they must pay more because they have more is a long way from my understanding of Liberterian thinking.

More broadly this problem speaks to admission issues at the elite private schools. Just as they are dumbing-down the faculty, they are dumbing-down those admitted. Exceptional, qualified students are being passed-over due to diversity and affirmative action goals.

Either you are and want to be the best, or you do not. Duke has chosen not to be the best and it is costing them.

Amazing! Johnson's agenda is just as transparent as Chafe, et al.'s: Johnson, at the hands of "liberal" academe, underwent a bruising and public tenure fight. Now, his objective is to destroy the reputations of liberal academics in some sort of bizarre revenge fantasy.

Don't get me wrong: the Duke case was a rush to judgment based on pre-conceived notions of jock culture, and mature, intelligent people should have known better than to condemn the players before the case had run its course.

But again, this blog is not about the Duke case: it's a recruiting medium for the right's culture wars and a publicity organ for Johnson's book.

Steve:KC Johnson is to academia as Bjorn Lomborg is to environmentalism and global warming. Both are courageous, intellectually honest, with the soundest morals and the courage to follow the facts toward the Truth. You can choose, with defensive cowardice, to stay where you are, in the gloom. Most of us on this blog have welcomed and prized its illumination, however.Tom

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review